The bathing season is about to end in a good part of our country and it is an ideal time to take stock and continue fighting to maintain the quality of the waters and the environmental values of the coast. It is also the opportunity to join the events organized by the Libera Project, an SEO-BirdLife initiative in alliance with Ecoembes, in the seventh edition of the campaign to remove waste (garbage) and analyze this problem '1m2 for the beaches and seas'.
This year's edition will take place between September 16 and 24, coinciding with International Beach Cleanup Day (World Clean Up Day) which is celebrated on September 16. "The Libera Project once again invites all sectors of society to join the great network of liberators and to take action, going out to characterize and collect garbage on the beaches of our country, transmitting to those around them the importance of keep nature free of waste," the organizers highlight.
To participate, interested organizations, associations or entities have been able to register and create their own collection points through the Proyectolibera.org website. In addition to raising awareness in society about the conservation and protection of coastal environments, the LIBERA Project seeks, with this new edition of '1m2 for the beaches and the seas', to continue expanding knowledge about the characteristics and effects of rubbish about these environments and the species that inhabit them.
Next September 16 and coinciding with World Beach Day, H.M. Queen Doña Sofía will participate in the “1m2 for the beaches and the seas” campaign. Once again this year, the Reina Sofía Foundation actively supports this campaign aimed at protecting marine ecosystems. As on previous occasions, Doña Sofía will join the fight against garbage in a day of awareness and waste collection that will take place on this occasion on the Caleta del Estacio beach (near La Manga del Mar Menor, Murcia), accompanied by José Luis Nogueira, director of the Reina Sofía Foundation; Pedro García, director of ANSE; Rosa Trigo, CEO of Ecoembes, and Federico García, head of the SEO/BirdLife Social Area.
In addition to waste removal, the initiative includes characterization work that allows data to be extracted such as the weight, quantity or type of waste and which is essential to define guidelines and create efficient solutions to end the problem. To do this, the participants of the campaign, among whom, as every year, will be the divers from the Marine Vigilantes Network, of the NGO Oceánidas, who will also use the MARNOBA app, designed by the Zero Discharge Association and KAI Marine Services, a platform that collects and stores all the information necessary to know the garbage abandoned on coasts and seas throughout the country.
When the campaign ends, all this data will be added to the more than 820,000 objects already characterized since 2017 and that Libera has compiled in its 'Garbage Barometer', and will subsequently be integrated into the database of the Ministry for the Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge of Spain (Miteco).
The 2022 edition of the campaign, and thanks to the participation of more than 6,000 liberators (voluntary participants), more than 7 tons of garbage were removed from beaches and marine environments throughout the country, of which They characterized 46,800 residues. Among the trash most found and analyzed, a significant volume of cigarette butts, plastic pieces and wet wipes stood out.
“Garbage has become an agent of the global change to which we are subjecting planet Earth. Thanks to these initiatives we are achieving that more and more citizens understand that we cannot continue producing and consuming goods at the rate at which we are doing so and that its consequences are increasingly evident," says Miguel Muñoz, coordinator of the Libera Project in SEO/BirdLife.
For Sara Güemes, coordinator of the Libera Project at Ecoembes: "Throughout our experiences in the different citizen science campaigns, we have consistently observed the large presence of waste such as wipes and all types of plastics on our coasts, in addition to the great The challenge that this poses is the pollution caused by cigarette butts, the effect of which lasts between 7 and 12 years. For this reason, at Libera, we want to renew for another year our commitment to continue working tirelessly to clean and raise awareness throughout society about the importance of keep our beaches and seas free of trash and protected, so we can fully enjoy them.
